Gaining Heart
by Eleneri
Summary: Eighth in the Rose Shepard series: Garrus Vakarian needs to track down a black marketer selling cloned organs and asks Shepard for help. When they locate the Fedele in the Kepler Verge, Garrus, Shepard, and Kaidan embark on a nightmare mission to retrieve the rogue doctor. Rated M for some elements of horror and the occasional swear word. There's romance in there, promise!
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** my expanded between the lines take on Garrus' loyalty mission. Eighth in the Rose Shepard continuity, and fits in the canon events before Romance Convo 4 with Kaidan Alenko.

**Standard Disclaimer**: All trademarked characters and Mass Effect itself are the property of Bioware, EA, etc. I'm just playing nicely with their toys and will put them back neatly when I'm done.

* * *

_**SSV Normandy**_

_**CIC **_

_**Kepler Verge**_

* * *

Shepard stood in the pilot pit of the _Normandy_, arms crossed and brow furrowed. "Anything yet?" The orange light from the holographic HUDs that Joker used to control the ship washed over her face, illuminating her frown.

"Nothing on ladar, ma'am."

"Keep looking."

"Aye-aye, Commander. You want a needle in a haystack, we get you a needle in a haystack." Joker's voice carried more than its usual component of sarcasm. "Just don't ask me to jump."

Shepard raised an dark eyebrow at him. "Wouldn't dream of it, Joker. Hard to pilot when you're bouncing. Even for you."

He snorted. "Heh. Yeah. But the sound of snapping bones would make such an awesome percussion piece."

The instrumentation pinged softly, drawing their attention. "What have we got?"

"A freighter." A slow smile spread across Joker's bearded face. "And look who it's registered to."

"Hello there, needle." Mirroring the pilot's smug look, Shepard leaned over the comm. "Garrus Vakarian, report to the CIC."

O o O

The ex-C-sec officer was on the bridge within a minute. As soon as he stalked up to the helm with that peculiar predatory glide that was uniquely turian, Shepard brought up a screen at the navigation station and pointed at a freighter that was cruising at standard orbit from the nearest planet. "MSV _Fedele_. Registered to a Dr. Heart."

Garrus' mandibles tightened against his face. "We found him?"

Shepard knew humans couldn't hear all the registers of a turian voice, but she recognized the inflections she could hear well enough. Garrus was ready to go to war. "You bet your ass we did. Get your gear." Shepard tapped the comm. "Lieutenant Alenko, suit up. We're going boots to ground in ten."

Kaidan's pleasantly raspy voice sounded in the dim confines of the bridge. "Aye, ma'am."

Garrus stiffened and looked at her. "No offense, Shepard, but why bring someone else? I can handle this."

She fought the urge to cross her arms over her chest. She had no need to indicate defensiveness. "My ship, Garrus. My rules. Standard complement for the shore party, and Alenko comes with. He's our field medic. If your Dr. Saleon has been experimenting on hostages, and if they're still alive, we'll need him."

The turian shook his head. "I'm not going to be responsible for his safety, Shepard."

She laughed. "Clearly, I haven't taken you on enough shore parties, Garrus. The only one who's responsible for anyone's safety is me. Now go suit up. You have eight minutes left before we go in."

O o O

The airlock of the _Fedele_ was disturbingly quiet, cloaked in vague shadows from poorly-maintained lights, and smelled of industrial cleaners mixed with the unpleasent ammonia reek of piss and a vaguely rusty scent that wasn't quite blood. The _Normandy_ shore party stood braced just inside the connection between their vessel and this one, and Shepard was willing to bet that neither of the other two really wanted to go any further into the stricken freighter.

"Lieutenant?"

"Nothing on HUD, Commander. No hostiles of any kind." Kaidan brought up his omnitool and used local scans for verification. There were times, Shepard thought, that his methodical nature was very useful. "Standard freighter layout. The medical modules we saw from the _Normandy_ might be just out of ping range. More likely, they're shielded from normal scans. Would Saleon have the tech to do that?"

"Probably." Garrus considered the thought, his talons tightening on the stock of his rifle. "It would explain how he was able to evade detection for so long if he's emulating a normal freighter to anything but visual scans."

"I don't see anything to indicate any security systems." Shepard looked around the corridor and frowned. "Which means there either aren't any, or they're too well hidden to spot. I don't like this." She blew out a breath and straightened her shoulders. "All right, weapons free, check your targets first. Last we heard, this asshole had hostages, so let's do this by the numbers, gentlemen."

"She must be talking to you, Alenko." Garrus checked the scope on his sniper rifle. "I'm no gentleman."

"I see my reputation precedes me." Kaidan flipped the safety off his sidearm. "Let's rock, Garrus."

O o O

They entered the poorly lit main hold of the freighter in standard pattern. Kaidan held up a fist in the universal military shorthand for "halt". "Pings, Commander," he said quietly.

Shepard nodded and unclipped her sniper rifle. The rest of the squad went to cover while she edged around the corner of the large, battered crate in front of them, looking for mobile enemies. After a few long, breathless moments, a shambling... _thing_ crossed into her line of sight. She pulled the trigger even as revulsion iced her gut.

As the first thing dropped bonelessly to the ground, a gray-green tide of mouldering creatures poured around the weathered crates. A wave of putrid stench rolled ahead of them, triggering an instinctive urge to vomit. "We have incoming!" Shepard ruthlessly suppressed her gag reflex and fired at a containment cell someone had left lying around. Several of the creatures were vaporized in the resulting localized explosion. One of them was blown off its feet, literally leaving them at the epicenter of the blast while the rest of the body was shredded. But enough of the zombies were left outside the blast radius that they managed to make it through and get into close quarters with the shore party.

Shepard reclipped her rifle and drew her sidearm fast, drilling one of the zombies point blank between the ribs as it reached for her. Gas and guts exploded in a putrid splatter that reeked of scorched manure; Shepard managed to get her arm up to shield her face, but otherwise took the brunt of the refuse. Almost immediately, a wave of nausea swept her. Fighting to keep herself upright, she killed another zombie and scanned to see where her team was. Garrus was holding his own through massive amounts of firepower, and so was Kaidan, flaring a clean biotic blue and firing at a zombie that was clutching at his armor. She squinted down the barrel of her heavy pistol, drawing a bead on the thing, just as the lieutenant wedged his own gun under the creature's chin and fired.

The resulting eruption of airborne miasma and pus made Kaidan double over, retching in an immediate and apparently unsuppressable action. On her HUD, his hardsuit signal registered biological systemic failures and a toxin warning; a quick glance showed hers was the same. She staggered over to him, awkwardly pulling him clear of the remains of Saleon's victim and his own illness.

"That was the last of them. You two all right?" Garrus stood over them as they retreated closer to the cargo area hatch and slid to a sitting position behind a stack of crates that hadn't been ground zero for a zombie battle. "I'm no real expert on how your soft faces are supposed to look, but you look a little... green. Is that a normal human color variant?"

"No. " Shepard coughed wretchedly. "Those things were full of poison gas. Or something. You didn't inhale it?"

Garrus cocked his head at her, twitching a mandible in what looked a lot like a smug turian grin. "Real C-Sec officers never inhale, Shepard."

Shepard let her head thunk against the crate behind her and closed her eyes as nausea roiled through her on a greasy wave. "If I didn't feel like such shit, I'd kick you, Garrus."

Beside her, Kaidan groaned. "I'll help you kick him, Commander. When I stop wanting to throw up." He scanned them both with his omnitool's medical suite, then fumbled in his gear belt. "Feels like an acute systemic neurotoxin. Affects the large muscle groups first. The hardsuit medigel dispensing system isn't going to do a lot with that."

"Tell me you have an antidote."

"Wouldn't leave the _Normandy_ without it. It's not exactly standard kit, but I figured this wasn't exactly a standard assignment." Fingers visibly trembling, arm muscles starting to seize, Kaidan pulled a syringe out of his medkit and injected it into a port in his hardsuit. "Normally, I'd fix you first, Commander." He coughed, breath rasping in his chest. "But in this instance, the physician needs to heal himself before the paralysis affects me further and I'm useless to you. I must have gotten a larger dose."

"No need to apologize, lieutenant. N7, remember? I can't help it if I'm tougher than you."

Kaidan's laugh was shaky, rusty, but warm. Warmer than it should have been, probably. "Aye-aye, ma'am." He leaned over her a moment later, and Shepard felt the clenching and trembling in her muscles start to taper off a moment after he injected her. "Got anything in there for the nausea?"

He chuckled, a rough, low sound that she had no business finding as attractive as she did, now or ever. "I'm carrying some peppermints in my belt pouch. Want one?"

Shepard tried not to look too desperate. "Oh, Maker, yes. Anything's better than this taste in my mouth."

"Like burnt mulch, old blood and..." He trailed off, a blush suffusing his cheeks as he handed over the candy.

"Yeah. Just like that. Except I think I detect a hint of unwashed dog hair, too." She fumbled with the clear wrapper, her fingers not up to their usual fine dexterity, and popped the candy into her mouth as soon as she could. "Oh, yeah. That's better. Not all the way better, but it definitely helps."

Kaidan crunched into his peppermint with strong white teeth. "We got hit with zombie pus and brains at point blank range, Shepard. I think the only real cure for that amount of sheer gross is time. Lots of time."

"Shepard, huh?" He was close, so close, and he was looking at her. He was still relatively pale, but his eyes were warm.

"Hey, we got puked on together. I figure that's gotta build camaraderie."

Shepard laughed, a short, soft sound. "Yeah. I'll go with that."

"Are you two going to finish healing up over there or are we going to wait while Saleon rebuilds his zombie army?" Garrus was on overwatch, covering the expanse of the freighter beyond their position. He was also very studiously not watching them.

"Antidote's going to need a few minutes to work its way through our systems, Garrus." Kaidan fell back against the crate, wedged in tight next to Shepard. He was pressed against her left side, from shoulder to hip and thigh, and though she couldn't feel anything beyond the sensation of pressure through the layers of neoprene and ceramic composites that formed her hardsuit, the knowledge that it was _Kaidan_ who was close enough for her to see the texture of the dense black beard shadow that defined his jawline no matter how recently he'd shaved, that he was touching her, even in such a businesslike fashion, was... nice. More than nice. It was _great_.

Shepard closed her eyes again, less against the nausea that was still rolling around in her gut, and more against the completely unprofessional desire to look at her lieutenant like a mooning teenager. But the moment she did, her traitorous imagination called up an image of Kaidan on the _Normandy_, regulation ship's blues clinging to his broad shoulders and flat abdomen, shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal the lean lines of strong biceps and forearms. All Alliance members were fit and attractive; partially due to the gene mods they all got when they enlisted, and the lives they lived afterward. But Shepard suspected that Kaidan Alenko had been damnably attractive even before science had gotten its hooks in him.

_Put it away, dammit, Shepard. Squadmate. Subordinate. You don't fraternize. Ever. Never even been tempted. Not to mention, you're on the clock, and Kaidan and Garrus are counting on you to lead. So get the hell up and lead. _

Despite her determination, it was another five minutes before Shepard felt the muscle tremors and nausea taper off to the point where she was reasonably certain that she could shoot straight again. She spent that five minutes mentally reviewing standard freighter layouts and all the places their quarry could booby-trap or stash a number of zombies. She reviewed what she'd do to Saleon when she found him, what she'd actually _like_ to do when she found him, and a variety of scenarios that involved talking down Garrus from doing what_ he'd_ like to do to Saleon. She very carefully did not pay any attention whatsoever to the pressure of Kaidan Alenko's arm against hers, or the sight of his leg stretched out next to hers. She also absolutely squashed the mental image of her in the captain's shower, Kaidan _with_ her in the captain's shower, helping her remove the sweat and muck of this damned mission. She absolutely did not entertain even a moment's curiosity about what his hands would feel like on her skin...

_Dammit! Head in the game, Shepard! _ "Anything moving out there, Garrus?"

"Not a zombie in sight, Shepard."

She didn't look at Kaidan when he struggled upright, except to note if he moved well or if he was too compromised to continue with her and Garrus. "Well, then, guess we better go find them."

The turian's multilayered voice practically hummed with his barely-leashed need to find the renegade scientist. "It's about damn time."

"Garrus, a patient hunter gets his quarry. Eventually." Shepard unwedged herself from her corner and started to lever herself upright. A black-gauntleted hand appeared in front of her. She looked up into Kaidan's dirt-smeared face with its carefully controlled expression.

He looked... patient.

_Shit._

Shepard called herself six kinds of fool, but she accepted Alenko's hand up. Even through her hardsuit gauntlet, the contact sang up her arm, humming in her nerves. She was surprised her HUD didn't light up with a warning from her medical suite indicating biological riots. _ Shit, shit, shit. _ "All right, gentlemen and C-Sec officers, let's go find us an evil doctor."

O o O


	2. Chapter 2

_**MSV Fedele **_

_**standard orbit **_

_**Kepler Verge**_

* * *

Despite Shepard's concerns, the rest of the ship was silent and empty except for the lingering smell of blood and vomit that seemed to permeate the worn deckplates. No booby-traps, no zombies, no hostages. She felt like they were prowling through a spacegoing tomb. "There's nothing here."

"There's Saleon. He has to be here. He wouldn't have just abandoned his pet projects." Garrus' mandibles flared in agitation, and his talons tightened on the grip of his rifle. "We just haven't found him yet."

"Easy, Garrus. If he's here, we will find him. I need you to keep a level head, though."

Garrus looked down at her with a slight offside head tilt and a twitch of his right mandible - his species' equivalent of a raised eyebrow. "A turian is always level-headed, Shepard. Unless we receive orders to the contrary."

"I'm going to hold you to that, Vakarian." Shepard looked over her right shoulder at Kaidan, who actually _did_ have a level head. "What have you got for me?"

She thought she saw his eyes darken, just a bit, and instantly regretted her choice of words. Apparently she wasn't the only one having trouble remembering the fraternization regs.

But if Kaidan's eyes registered attraction, his voice reflected only his usual professionalism. "Registering one signal, commander. On the bridge. But I recommend that we complete a thorough sweep and clear, just in case. Saleon may have adapted biological-based tech that doesn't show on a standard scan."

Shepard nodded approvingly. "I count three doors. We'll start left, then right, and save the bridge for last. Fast but thorough, team."

They went in, fast and thorough, Shepard going low, Garrus going high, Kaidan watching their six. The side rooms were clear of enemies, but not of carnage. Blood splatter was thick in some places, the smell cloying and obscenely sweet in the stale air, in a gruesome rainbow of colors that indicated that more than one species had been victimized by Dr. Saleon over the course of his flight.

"Last door," Garrus murmured, gesturing to the closed bridge.

Shepard raised her pistol, mouth held in a firm line. "Open it."

The bridge was in little better shape than the adjoining rooms, but the Normandy team didn't pay attention to anything other than the brown-complexioned Salarian who was cowering behind one of the flight chairs. "You're... you're not one of those creatures."

Shepard didn't lower her gun; neither did Garrus or Kaidan, who manipulating his omnitool with a speed that suggested he was sweeping for enemy signatures, scanning for security measures, or trying to hack the ship's databases. Possibly all three at once, knowing him. "No," she replied levelly. "We're from an Alliance vessel. We found your ship adrift."

"Yes, yes. The creatures, they... The ship was disabled." The salarian wrung his hands nervously, looking from the armed marines to the armed officer. "They would have killed me. Thank you. Thank you for saving me from those things!"

Garrus was very, very still, his blue eyes assessing the babbling scientist. "Commander, that's him. That's Dr. Saleon."

The salarian blinked, and his eyes gleamed more moistly. "What? My name is Heart. Doctor Heart." His long fingers fluttered nervously, picking at the cuffs of his dark suit. "Please, get me out of here."

Shepard sensed Kaidan's presence close behind her and to her right. She slid a brief glance at him, trusting Garrus to have Doctor "Heart" covered. She raised one eyebrow quizzically.

The lieutenant nodded, tapping his omnitool once before disengaging it and centering his pistol on the Salarian.

Shepard nearly smiled. _Good work, LT. I owe you a drink for that one._

"Officer? Are you sure it's him?" She very deliberately didn't use Garrus' name.

The turian nodded at her. "Positive." He locked his attention on Saleon in a wholly predatory move. "There's no escape this time, Doctor. I'd harvest your organs first, but we don't have the time."

The salarian cowered back, inching away from the marines and toward a console. "You're crazy," he sputtered in a high, quick tone typical of his species. "He's crazy! Please, don't let him do this to me!"

Shepard fought the urge to roll her shoulders to relieve the tension gathering there, and made her decision. "We'll take him in, drop him off with the military."

Garrus' mandibles flared in shock, and he stared at her, but his rifle stayed trained on Saleon. "But we have him. We can't let him get away! Not again!"

And here it was, the conversation she hadn't wanted to have with him. "If he dies, we'll never know what he's been up to, or how he did it. Do you want revenge for those people we just had to gun down in the cargo hold, or justice?"

"I - " Garrus appeared frozen with indecision, his hands trembling slightly on his rifle. Shepard was sure that only she or Kaidan would ever have noticed that fine tremor. "I... want justice. That's what I swore to uphold." His multitoned voice darkened, subvocals vibrating too low for her to hear. "No matter how much I want revenge."

Shepard locked eyes with him, and put every ounce of command and empathy she had into her voice. "We'll take him in, interrogate him, and he'll serve his time. This atrocity won't happen again, Garrus."

"Garrus?" The salarian's high voice ratcheted up a pitch. "Garrus Vakarian?"

The turian turned his ice-blue gaze back to their captive, every line of his body shouting leashed predatory intent. "I told you I'd catch you some day."

"And I told you you'd never keep me." Saleon moved fast and slammed his fist onto the console.

Shepard waited, counting under her breath just loud enough for the salarian to hear, then looked around theatrically. "Fat lot of nothing happening there, Doc."

"I'm not going to prison!" Saleon pulled a pistol from a concealed holster and aimed it at Garrus.

There was a triple-note burst of gunfire, and Saleon's chest erupted with blood and bits of lung tissue. The salarian slumped to the stained decking, pistol falling from his limp hand.

"And so he dies, anyway." Garrus actually snarled in frustration. "What was the point of that?"

Shepard holstered her pistol. "You can't predict how people will act, Garrus," she said quietly. "You can control how you'll respond. In the end, that's what really matters."

"Yeah." Garrus reclipped his rifle to his weapons loadout, tension visibly sheeting off him. "I... I don't ever think I've met anyone like you before, Commander." The turian turned toward Kaidan. "That was nice work with the hacking, Alenko. What did Saleon have on that console, anyway?"

"A vapor distribution system with some more of that nerve toxin we got the chance to sample earlier." Kaidan grimaced. "Absorbable through inhalation or pores. It wouldn't have been a good feeling, for the few seconds we had to think about it."

"Very, very nice." Garrus made a duo-toned hum of approval. "Well, guess we're done here, eh, Commander?"

"Yeah." Shepard rolled her head on her neck, trying to dislodge the stiffness. "Decon is going to feel really good after all this."

"Decon and a shower." Kaidan agreed, looking down at his muck-encrusted armor.

"Decon, a shower, and a beer." Garrus corrected. "I'm buying."

"Now you're talking, Vakarian." Shepard led the way out of the bridge. "Since Alenko already swiped Saleon's data, we can pull back to the_ Normandy_. A volley from the mass accelerator cannon will blow this abbatoir to hell."

"One helluva funeral pyre, ma'am." Kaidan grimaced, looking around once they reached the gore-splattered cargo hold. "These people deserved better than they got."

"We've done our best, Kaidan." Shepard put her hand on his shoulder, watching as Garrus moved ahead through the maze of crates. "That's all anyone can do." She bowed her head and said a brief prayer to the Maker for the people they hadn't been able to save. "That's all anyone can ever do," she murmured. Tired. She was suddenly so very tired.

"Aye-aye, ma'am." Kaidan hesitated, then held out a hand. "Come on, Shepard. Let's go home."

Shepard hesitated, staring at him. She told herself he was being kind. That he was acting as a field medic, noticing her exhaustion. She even blamed his Sentinel training for his apparently overactive need to protect her. But she remembered with perfect clarity the look he'd given her before they'd swept the rest of the _Fedele_ - that hunter's patience - and she knew she was lying to herself.

_Regs, Shepard. Regs. Court martial. Loss of two promising careers because of horomones. Alenko deserves better than you can give, the baggage you bring, and you know it._

She knew it. She'd known it from the moment she'd met him on the _Normandy_.

_Ignore him. Leave him._

It would have been the sensible thing to do. Practical. Correct. She was the ranking officer. It was her job to protect her people from their own mistakes.

Shepard closed her eyes and swore in Greek for a long, sizzling moment. When she opened her eyes again, she met Kaidan's slightly concerned gaze. And she took his hand.


End file.
